Domain Aliases Bad, 301 Redirects Good

by Crack Google

Welcome to part II of our "Google Changes Search Algorithm"! The Jury is still out, but we believe that Domain Aliases were responsible for the recent Search Engine Ranking demotion on Google.

In our last article Google Changes Search Algorithm - Part I we talked about how our ranking for a certain Keyword Phrase changed very negatively. We were sent from the first page with a rank of #7 to a rank of over #530. We have some findings to report and it's very important that you read this article if you have more than one domain name pointing to your website.

We made some changes in the last 48 hours and we are already seeing immediate results. We immediately deleted all domain aliases that we had pointing to CrackGoogle.com. Crackmsn.com, Crackaol.com, and more. These domains are appropriate and should indeed point to the website. But since adding, we were whacked from the first page. After doing some homeworks, we believe we found the problem. It was not the fact that we had more than one domain that we felt merited being directed to our site, but rather it appears that Google was seeing "duplicate content" or duplicate websites. We should have known better. We know about 301s, we know about duplicate content. What we didn't know is that the way our aliases were setup, didn't properly do a 301 redirect. WIthout going into detail, MAKE SURE, MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE, that if you have more than one domain point to a "main" domain or your "main" website, that you are doing a true 301 redirect. I can NOT stress this enough. If you fail to do so, you will feel the results quickly and painfully. Read on....

After deleting the aliases less than only 48 hours ago, we have already climbed back up over, ready for this, WELL OVER 100 places. We are now in the 400's and climbing rapidly.

But what about our aliases? We like them? We want them? We think people who directly type them into their browser should be pointed to our website, so why can't we use them? Is this our fate? The short answer is NO!

The Solution: 301 Redirects

If you don't know what a 301 redirect is, it's essentially a permanent redirect. So when Google crawls that domain, instead of seeing another website with duplicate content, they are redirected permanently to the domain you have for your main website, in this case CrackGoogle.com.

You can do a Search for 301 redirects and find plenty of information. But for the sake of what we needed to do in regards to our goals, we are going to share some of our code from our .htaccess file. The .htaccess file is for Apache webservers and is the secret sauce for doing all sorts of wonderful things for Search Engine Optimization. (We will be posting a great deal of information in the coming months for how to use your .htaccess file, but solely from an SEO perspective.

WIthout further delay, and as promised, the solution. This was added to the bottom of our .htaccess file. It assumes you have rewrite engine on. (again, if you don't understand any of this. Do homework on 301 redirects and .htaccess / apache, and then you can simply copy and paste the code below and use on your own site. Be sure to change the domains to reflect the domains you wish to redirect, etc.)

########## Begin - Rewrite rules for SEO/Google 301 redirects

#ENTERGoogle.COM
> >RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^enterGoogle.com [nc,or]
> >RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.enterGoogle.com [nc]
> >RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.CrackGoogle.com/$1 [R=301,L]

#GoogleCRACKS.COM
> >RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^Googlecracks.com [nc,or]
> >RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.Googlecracks.com [nc]
> >RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.CrackGoogle.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This concludes Part II, and there will be a Part III which will include the lastest updates on our new blog at blogspot.com called CrackGoogleDotCom.BlogSpot.com. It is our first test of many to see how various blogs and feeds begin to affect our traffic and Search Engine Rankings. We figured we should start with blogspot.com because it's owned by Google. Makes sense.

So check out the blog, it's a good read and currently only has our first post. The post itself explains whey we only have one post at the moment. So again, feel free to visit and give it a read, you might gain something or have something to offer!

Thank you for reading this article,

Crack Google